Tech: SECDIV, or how the little warpig grew up into Sumo Boar
TDCorp has a security department, that our acronym-loving little piggies call SECDIV. SECDIV is by nature retiring, a little shy (^_~) and does not reveal much of what it does, except for the numbers in the annual reports and the crime/"unproductive behavior" stats they put out every quarter. Despite that, TDC has been involved in conflicts almost since it was founded (and if you see our history, we were the result of what happens when a nation whose military forces consist of 250 part-time farmer-soldiers tries to conquer territory)... so SECDIV has to have a more than passing familiarity with war. After all, we have taken part in the following conflicts, which seem to spring into life as soon as I send a new message to the Yahoo! list (one might think that the commies are right in saying war is the best business =D): - Mari'im War (a little disaster that ended with the player bolting from the game) - Dignania (Our training ground under the Zartanian boot) - Ulanova (Big deployment, and part humanitarian mission) - Feniz (Debut of the Black Fleet) This is a more-or-less adequate description of the REAL SECDIV, not the friendly black-bereted girls you will see in the main cities. TDC takes care of its image, and we know that a certain prejudice against soulless capitalists already exists, so the activities of SECDIV are kept very low-key (especially after the role the private security services played in our peculiar "independence" process, narrated here). So, officially, TDC charges corporations security fees according to size and negotiated need, and since that covers individual stockholders' needs too (the SECDIV girl on the beat watches the shops AND the customers for the same price), individual stockholders free-ride on that, unless they want extra services, which can be purchased. The Federation of Otagan Industry had a pretty heavy private army before privatization, much bigger than the 250-member St. Kildan Constabulary. Since then, and especially since the New Territories boom, and taking into account TDC alone makes about 7/8 Wal-Mart revenues, mainly off telecoms, health care, transport and consultancy, the private army has been reinforced and transformed. Think of Japan: they spend 1% of GDP on defence per constitutional mandate, but it's 1% of the fourth largest Earth economy, giving them F-15s, AEGIS cruisers and M1 Abrams tanks. SECDIV has a police division and a "foreign-qualified division", both barracked, and the MSO (Market Stability Operations) special-forces unit, all Zartanian-trained. Who pays for it? There are very deep pockets in Chilangotitlán... and as Blackadder and other examples show, the only thing that keeps a lid on private armies on our own blue ball is governments' fear of them. SECDIV has an army, about Bundeswehr (Heer) big (2000s Bundeswehr, i.e. 270K combat troops and associated matériel); it has a navy, mainly sub-based, called the Black Fleet, and more rumored than anything; and it has a mixed air force, with Zartanian fighters and helos backed up by our "10,000 Cessnas" doctrine of very cheap, very good manned/unmanned fighter/bombers, each carrying a 250-lb little surprise. All that costs a pretty penny, but if you spread it among the Vexillian equivalent of the Fortune Global 100, it is quite tolerable. You guys may want to ask your companies what their TDC-based branches are up to; however, given that TDC's prosperity is intimately linked to the good will of all governments, and that we don't move a finger without asking UNV (Feniz as an example) it is unlikely anyone has anything to fear. Here is some more detail about our hardware: Ho229, aka the Go 229 A0 flying wing; built to order for our "10,000 Cessnas" doctrine that overwhelms any air-defense system with huge numbers of cheap, light, invisible aircraft each carrying a 250-kilo bomb. Available in manned and unmanned versions, with 2D thrust vectoring, highly maneuverable, in A/UA (air superiority), B/UB (fighter-bomber), R/UR (recce) versions. A nice domestic addition to our Zartanian-sourced normal butt-kickin' air force. The DO-10 is the C-17, the famous dark-green "Avocado" used for everything from humanitarian missions to carrying around turbines and rocket parts. The Totoaba is an adapted Typhoon-class cargo sub, taken from Norilsk Nickel's idea for valuable cargoes. TMM (Transport Marine Mixtupteca) built some to get some *ahem* unspecified payloads to our good friends in *ahem* "zome" other "unzpecified" location in Vexillium (wink wink nudge nudge), and TDC bought a couple because hey, we like big fat subs. And yes, they can launch manned and unmanned Hos, and some really nasty cruise missiles. You do not mess with the fat sub. In short, w3 w1ll t34ch j00 t3h m34n1n9 0f ph33r. >=)